Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is a depressing exercise of that mid-sixties genre in which the Greatest Generation skewers the Swinging Sixties and its own middle age at the same time. You've seen it plenty: Mom or Pop makes the scene, does the Frug, and flirts with infidelity, embarrassing the teenage daughter, while humoring her pretentious boyfriend as he spews pseudo-modern, pseudo-intellectual psychobabble. The marriage is in some kind of mid-life jeopardy and we get lots of racy dallying with modern morality before- (surely this is not a genre-wide spoiler!)- reaffirming traditional values in a final clinch. Actually, some of these are kind of fun, and they're nearly always fun to look at and listen to.Not this one.The comic situation here takes way too long to develop, spends a great deal of that time telling you exactly what's going to happen before it happens, and isn't even a little bit funny or believable. Whatever comic opportunities are there just aren't delivered upon, and the pacing is excruciating. The characters are such loose sketches that we aren't tempted to buy them either. Perhaps worst of all, the comic talents of a great cast are wasted, and not just the principles- while Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and a very game Deborah Kerr are striking out, great talent like Reta Shaw, Kathleen Freeman, John McGiver, and Parley Baer are left to ride the bench in a film that's thirty minutes too long.The Scottish mother-in-law and Cesar Romero's shyster, both broadly stereotyped, bring the only really lively support, and it's mostly just bellowing and posturing.The only redemption here, if any, is Dean Martin's bachelor pad, a wonderful set on which nothing really happens. And the color is pretty nice and lively for the most part, as per the period. And brunette Nancy Sinatra gives it her best and is always fun to watch. She has great chemistry with her dad and Dean.To cleanse your soul of this, pull out Preston Sturges' immortal "The Palm Beach Story" and see how a marriage comedy should move and breathe.

Plot: A man and his wife (Frank Sinatra and Deborah Kerr)accidentally divorce,and his wife accidentally marries his best friend,a confirmed life-long bachelor. (Dean Martin) Hilarity Ensues.(supposedly)This movie is 45 yrs old, and boy has it not aged well. While it LOOKS handsome on a modern TV, with elegant set design and wonderful costumes (examples:Dean Martin's stylish bachelor pad, & Deborah Kerr's gorgeous emerald cape/dress ensemble) the plot and social values in the film are creakier than Gilligan's boat. However,as my sister and I discovered, it is vastly improved with the addition of alcohol. A hilarious drinking game can be played by imbibing each time a character spouts a value that simply would NOT fly in a modern movie.Just a few examples: Frank Sinatra:"I believe a girl should stay at home until she's married."Or Deborah Kerr:"What a beautiful (Polar Bear!) rug. " Dean Martin: "It's real fur."DK: "I would expect as much from a big game hunter like you." Or Young Woman: "I can't swim." DM: "Helpless,eh? All the better." Or Young Woman:" Do you want children?" Dean Martin: (holds her hand and leers suggestively) "Try me."Or Frank Sinatra(in bed with his wife of 19 yrs,who is making the moves on him and wearing a glamorous negligee on their anniversary): "TV's off,you don't want to talk,what else is there to do in bed?" ('cos you know,people over 40 don't have a sex life)Or Dean Martin: "It's easy to tell a woman you're not going to marry her. I've done it dozens of times!" And so on.Of course these quotes may be slightly incorrect. By the end of the movie,I had played the game so many times,my faculties were more than a little impaired.I know it's largely unfair to judge the movies of old by the standards of today, but sometimes their promotion of old world values is so leaden and infuriating, it's hard not to be both amused & enraged while watching them. And unfortunately,there is simply not enough wit or style in the script or performances to make one forgive the cringe-worthy elements that haven't aged well. Deborah Kerr is the one bright spark in this uninspiring debacle. She acquits herself well despite the thin material,with a comic finesse that does more with the lacklustre script than it deserves. Frank and Dean pretty much dial in performances of the "ain't broads exasperating" variety.(A shame,as Frank demonstrated in 'The Man With the Golden Arm' he was an actor of range and subtlety).Hermoine Baddeley, so funny in 'Maude'' can do little with the battle-axe mother-in-law stereotype she's been handed.This film is a good reminder that 'the good old days' were not always so good. While the 1960s produced a plethora of 'sex comedy' films that while dated,still sparkle with panache and charm, this is not one of them.

This movie stars Deborah Kerr, one of the greatest actresses in history. She was nominated for Academy Awards six times and should have been nominated a few more times. I just saw her in "Night of the Iguana," and I thought that was another performance she should have gotten an academy award nomination for. I have never seen her give a bad performance. She gives a charming and funny performance here, keeping the movie together. Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin are spotty, good in some scenes, not-so-good in others.Sinatra is mostly sleepwalking, with Martin occasionally giving some funny lines, but Sinatra doing one-take -- let me out of here,is it 5 o'clock yet -- readings. This could have been a good movie. There are a couple of ways they could have gone with it. First, they could have turned it into a real musical. They already had two of the greatest singers of the time and Deborah Kerr who had starred in "The King and I". How hard would it have been to hire a couple of songwriters to knock out eight songs and get a choreographer to stage a few numbers. This would have added some energy to the slow,plot. Okay, if they didn't want to turn is into a musical, they could have made it into a more realistic comedy. In the movie, Deborah is tired of her marriage to dull Frank and wants to marry swinging Dean. Fine, lets do it. Only in the movie, Deborah gets a fake divorce from Frank and a fake marriage to Dean. This is silly, not funny. In order for the movie to work, the divorce and marriage had to be real. This would, no doubt, have made Frank really sad, and not just pretend sad, as in the film, but that would have made us care about him. Because it is not a real divorce, and Frank and Deborah's marriage isn't really threatened, nor is Frank and Dean's friendship, there is no intensity to the film.Divorce is a painful process. The filmmakers, and, I suspect, Frank Sinatra, didn't want any of that pain in the film. They just wanted a breezy comedy. Unfortunately, fake pain from a fake divorce does not equal comedy. Slipping on a banana peel is funny, faking slipping on a banana peel is not. Most of the film is hit and miss. Joi Lansing as Dean's curvy secretary was funny. Having 21 year old Davey Davison as a Go-Go dancer lusting after 49 year old Frank was not.You know the direction is not very good when you have Nancy Sinatra playing a scene as Frank Sinatra's daughter and you're convinced by the end of the scene that they have never met each before.

I love this movie; wish I could get a video tape of it. It's lite, funny, sad and has wonderful actors/actresses in it. It's a good movie to just sit back and veg out to!. Dean and Frank just ham it up and Deborah Kerr just fits right in and goes along with it. That's what makes it so good!